


whenever (you need me)

by orphan_account



Category: Fall Out Boy
Genre: Drabble, Mild Hurt/Comfort, Nonbinary Character, Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-05
Updated: 2018-08-05
Packaged: 2019-06-21 23:23:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,044
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15568638
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: “Something’s up with Patrick.”





	whenever (you need me)

**Author's Note:**

> yeah i dont know. i call this one who needs actually talking to people about your problems when you can project very literally onto band members? i am a genius.

“Something’s up with Patrick.”

“Hm,” Pete says, with the tone of someone not putting in the thought a _hm_ would usually indicate. “How so?”

Joe purses his lips, fully aware that Pete already isn’t taking this seriously. He likes to think he knows his partner better than anyone, but sometimes that’s just not true. If anyone knows Patrick, it’s, unfortunately, Pete, and usually if Pete thought everything was okay, Joe would agree. This is the only exception. 

“They’re acting weird,” Joe provides, which of course only gets an eyebrow raise from Pete “Weird Is My Middle Name—No, Andy, I’m Serious, I Just Got It Legally Changed” Wentz. Joe groans. “No, really, dude, something’s up!”

“Patrick,” Pete begins, speaking with an air of expertise that he definitely has in this subject, “is always weird.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Joe relents, “but not like this.”

“Like what?” Pete asks, and unfortunately it’s a logical question, to which Joe has no answer. 

“I don’t know,” he admits, groaning. “But, Pete, they’re my partner and I have a feeling. Isn’t that enough?”

“Well.” Pete sits forward and sighs, which is the closest to backing Joe up he’s come this whole time. “If it is, ask them.”

Joe is tired of Pete being so right. That’s supposed to be his job. He doesn’t know when he stopped being good at it. 

•••

“Babe, is something wrong?”

Joe freezes the second he’s said it, and meets Patrick’s shock-wide eyes, just as surprised as they are. Usually, his worries about Patrick are silenced by his trust that they’d tell him if something was wrong. But this time, it appears, is different, and neither of them know what to do about it. Joe braces himself for the impending _no, honey, I’d tell you if that was true_ , but it never comes. 

“I...yeah.” Patrick is looking anywhere but at Joe, their fork picking away at the pasta on their plate, which is apparently not good enough to eat all of a sudden. 

Joe blinks. He hadn’t seen that one coming. Patrick has never covered up an issue before, and he doesn’t know what to do now that they have. 

“Do you...” Joe treads lightly, afraid he might misstep and trigger some sort of trap. “Do you want to talk about it?”

Patrick coughs, digging their fork back into the pasta now that it’s a convenient method of stalling. Joe patiently waits as they chew and swallow, eyes dipping back down to their plate as they mutter. “Yeah, a little. I wasn’t sure how to mention it.”

“Okay.” Joe nods. This, at least, makes a little more sense, because Patrick struggling to insert things into conversation isn’t new at all. This is familiar. This, he can handle. “Okay, what is it?”

Patrick takes two bites, this time, chewing as slowly as they can manage and only stop because they’ve run out of food. They sigh, defeated, and set the fork down. Their eyes are still trained on the wood of the dining table as they mutter, “I don’t think I like they/them anymore.”

“Oh,” Joe says, completely surprised and unprepared for that response. He was bracing for a breakup, if he’s honest, though now he couldn’t be sure why. He clears his throat. Right. He can do this, he’s dealt with pronoun changes before. Okay, change, singular, and it was only two years ago when Patrick came out, but, still. “Okay, what do you want me to call you?”

Patrick bites their lip, poking at the streaky sauce remnants that stand bold against the white ceramic of the dish. “I don’t, uh. I don’t know. ‘They’ just feels...” They frown, tapping the plate to get a resounding clink. “Uncomfortable now, I guess. I don’t hate it, but...” A pause for a heavy groan. “I _know_ I hate he/him, Jesus, and now ‘they’ feels off, and actually I think it always did, so I guess...” Patrick finally looks up and meet Joe’s eyes, frowning. “I kind of want to try she/her, y’know, because I haven’t and the other two options aren’t right, so that’s gotta be it, yeah?” The fork meets ceramic again. _Clink_. 

“You want me to use ‘she’ for you?” Joe prompts, double-checking, because he’s never been sure with Patrick, and it’s always worth it to ask. 

Patrick nods, eyes suddenly sliding off of Joe again. “Yeah. Yeah, I do.”

“Okay, love, that’s no problem,” Joe promises, smiling warmly and offering a hand. Patrick takes it, looking relieved, and Joe squeezes lightly. It’s become a comfort between the two of them, and it works as well now as it ever has. 

“I’m, uh,” Patrick begins, nervously tapping the back of Joe’s hand with her thumb, “I’m, you know, still nonbinary and all, just I think I like...yeah.” She smiles weakly, and Joe hates how forced it looks. 

“No, no, I get it,” he assures her, squeezing once more, and feeling relief flood through him when that forced smile instantly turns real. “I get it, babe, it’s okay. You’re okay.”

Patrick sighs deeply, eyes fluttering shut for a moment before reopening, as bright and blue and loving as ever. “Thank you, Joe, thank you so much, it means so much to me that you tolerate this.”

“Tolerate this?” Joe shakes his head. “No, I’m not tolerating this, that would be stupid. I’ll always do whatever I need to do to make you more comfortable. I’m not tolerating anything. I’m happy to help.”

“That,” Patrick declares, letting her face fall into a truly easy smile now, thank god, “is why I love you.”

“No,” Joe says, “it’s ‘cause of the sex.”

“Okay, fine.” Patrick laughs. “It’s because you deal with my gender bullshit _and_ because of the sex.”

“Yes,” Joe agrees, “it is.”

Patrick squeezes his hand once, and he squeezes back. Upon closer inspection, something in her smile still isn’t quite right, but Joe says nothing about it. 

•••

“Something’s up with P-“

“ _Again_?” Pete sighs dramatically and tosses his magazine across the room. Joe isn’t even surprised, he’s spent so much time around Pete and seeing Pete do shit like that that now it’s just _well, it happens_ , and that’s that. “Joe, no offense, but if something’s gonna be wrong with her every—“ He breaks momentarily to think. “—three weeks, I’m not gonna be helping you every time.”

 _You didn’t even help me last time_ , Joe doesn’t say. What he says is, “Yeah, but really, something is wrong. And it’s just like last time, and I’m worried it’s the same thing, but what if I’m wrong this time and she freaks? Or something?” He’s grabbing onto excuses and he knows it. So does Pete. 

“Since when does she freak?” he asks, in that stupid voice of his that means _I know I’m right for once, and I’m very fucking smug about it_. “And were you wrong last time?”

Joe collapses back in his seat, moaning loudly in a way he hopes conveys his distress. Fuck, of course Patrick doesn’t freak, and of course something _was_ wrong last time he got this gut feeling. Joe seems to know Patrick better than he thinks he does. 

“Pete,” he mutters, “stop making sense. I’m not used to it.”

Pete hops up and strolls across the room to retrieve his banged-up magazine. “Will do,” he promises, not having any clue at all what Joe means by that. 

•••

This time, Joe plans ahead. He waits until he and Patrick have just finished a movie on the couch, and he’s tangled up in her arms and she’s half asleep and it’s the perfect time to spring something stupid like this on her. 

“Patrick,” he begins, forcing himself on even though his throat is suddenly dry, “is something wrong again?”

He feels her stiffen in his arms, and immediately untangles himself and sits back, meeting terrified blue eyes. 

“I.” Patrick looks taken-aback and confused but mostly afraid, which is not a good sign. Joe doesn’t want her afraid. That was the opposite of his plan for this. Luckily, she seems to calm down once she takes a deep breath, and then, softly, barely audibly, murmurs, “Yeah. Something is wrong.”

It takes everything in Joe to bypass his _you’re wrong about this_ alarms and ask, “Same thing?”

Patrick appears defeated. “Same thing.”

“Okay, do you want to go back to ‘they’?” Joe offers, anticipating difficulty to get his partner to actually admit what’s wrong—she never does. But Patrick’s face says enough, and she doesn’t even need to verbalize her “no”, but she does. 

“Not at all,” she responds, firm and insistent. “No, that’s...that’s still just uncomfortable.” Her eyes wander up to meet Joe’s, which is a brave move situationally. Joe is ready to try and prompt her next words, but she beats him to it. “No, ‘they’ is uncomfortable, but...so is ‘she’, I think. It’s not worse, but it’s not any better, either.” Her eyes roam away, bouncing off of Joe every time they near him again, opting to stare into absolutely anything else. 

Joe frowns, pieces not clicking in his head. “But, babe, you hate he/him.”

Patrick cringes, sighing. “Yeah, I...I do. That’s true too.” 

The room falls silent. Joe is confused as hell, if he’s honest, and doesn’t know how he’s supposed to continue this conversation. It’s up to Patrick now, and she doesn’t appear to be budging, until she reluctantly does. 

“There’s...something else, that I like,” she admits quietly. It sounds like she doesn’t want to, and Joe is sure that’s true, but he doesn’t even pay attention to it, when all he’s focused on is his partner being okay, which she clearly isn’t. “I realized,” she continues after a moment, “that I didn’t like he, they, _or_ she. So I looked for something else. And I found it. And.” Patrick’s breath catches, and she looks away. “Nevermind,” she mutters, “nevermind, it’s not important.” 

“No.” Joe is as surprised as Patrick appears by how forceful his tone is. But he stands by it, so he repeats it. “No, if it’s going to help you, it’s so fucking important, love. I don’t want to call you by pronouns you hate. Whatever it is that makes you happy, I’ll do it, you know that, right?”

Patrick exhales shakily. She might be crying. No, she _is_ crying. Just like it always does when Patrick is upset, Joe’s heart breaks. His hand finds a place atop Patrick’s shoulder. She takes a deep breath, and right as Joe is about to ask what it is, what this thing is that’s going to make her feel okay, she speaks. 

“It’s ze/hir,” she murmurs, and Joe only doesn’t apply it without hesitation because he’s not sure he heard right, or if he’ll do it right at all. 

Joe ignores the worry in Patrick’s eyes and tries to handle this logically. “Okay,” he says, first thing, which seems to make Patrick nearly melt with relief. “Okay, how does that work?”

Patrick seems to be reassured by the fact Joe hasn’t initiated a breakup yet, which is great. She nods, more for herself than Joe. “Okay, so, it’s like, uh...if you were talking about me, uh...you’d say, ‘That’s Patrick, ze really likes music, hir boyfriend is really sweet, and kind of makes hir hate hirself less.’” Ze takes a deep breath, and cautiously locks eyes with Joe, like ze’s trying to judge his emotions just from a gaze. (Joe is sure ze can.) “Does that...” Ze cringes. “Does that make sense?”

“Yes.” Joe nods immediately. He doesn’t mention that it might take him a bit of getting used to, but that’s not what’s important here. Patrick being comfortable is what’s imporant. “Yes, I got it. That’s okay, love. That’s okay.”

Patrick basically deflates in relief, falling back into Joe’s arms like ze belongs there. Joe smiles softly, curling an arm around hir shoulders. 

“Thank you,” Patrick murmurs. “I love you so much.”

“I told you,” Joe insists, “I would do anything to make you happy.”

Patrick beams into his shoulder, tightening hir hold on him, and nods, and that’s enough for Joe to trust that ze really believes him. And that’s all either of them need.

**Author's Note:**

> ah yes, unsure venting. im good at it. give em


End file.
